Detection of phishing attacks using similarity analysis

ABSTRACT

A computerized system and method to detect phishing cyber-attacks is described. The approach entails analyzing one or more displayable images of a webpage referenced by a URL to ascertain whether the one or more displayable images, and thus the webpage and potentially an email including the URL, are part of a phishing cyber-attack.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/469,400 filed Mar. 24, 2017, now U.S. Pat. No. 10,904,286 issued Jan. 26, 2021, the entire contents of which are incorporated by reference herein.

FIELD

Embodiments of the disclosure relate to the field of cyber security. More specifically, embodiments of the disclosure relate to a system for detecting phishing attacks.

BACKGROUND

Phishing is a growing problem on the Internet. Phishing is the attempt to obtain sensitive information from targets by disguising requests as legitimate. A phishing attack can entail the transmission of an electronic communication, such as an email, to one or more recipients that purports to be from a known institution, such as a bank or credit card company, and seems to have a legitimate intention; however, the email is actually intended to deceive the recipient into sharing its sensitive information. Often the email draws the recipient to a counterfeit version of the institution's webpage designed to elicit the sensitive information, such as the recipient's username, password, etc.

For example, a malware author may transmit an email to a recipient purporting to be from a financial institution and asserting that a password change is required to maintain access to the recipient's account. The email includes a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that directs the recipients to a counterfeit version of the institution's website requesting the recipient to enter sensitive information in a displayed form in order to change the recipient's password. Neither the email nor the URL are associated with the actual financial institution or its genuine website, although the email and the counterfeit website may have an official “look and feel” and imitate a genuine email and website of the institution. The phishing attack is completed when the recipient of the email enters and submits sensitive information to the website, which is then delivered to the malware author.

Current solutions for phishing detection include textual search and analysis of emails and image similarity analysis of the entirety of a displayed webpage. These solutions can be highly compute resource intensive and too often fail to detect phishing attacks. A new phishing detection technique is needed to more efficiently, efficaciously, and reliably detect phishing cyber-security attacks of this type.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Embodiments of this disclosure are illustrated by way of example and not by way of limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings, in which like references indicate similar elements and in which:

FIG. 1 is an exemplary block diagram of an architecture comprising a phishing detection and analysis system (PDAS) according to an embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary method for detecting and reporting if objects, received by the PDAS of FIG. 1 , comprise a phishing cyber-attack; and

FIG. 3 is an exemplary embodiment of a logical representation of the phishing detection and analysis system of FIG. 1 .

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

A phishing attack detection technique is provided to enhance the detection of a cyber-attack initiated via an electronic message (e.g. email, Short Message Service “SMS”, etc.) with a displayable hyperlink, e.g., a Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”). The enhanced phishing detection technique is configured to: (i) receive an object such as a webpage indicated (referenced) by a URL extracted from an email, (ii) statically and/or dynamically analyze the object to determine whether the object exhibits features (e.g., existence of any displayable images such as a user form or other user input prompt contained in the object) that are of a suspicious nature in that they are associated with known phishing attacks, (iii) extract each of the images included in the suspicious object which may be associated with phishing attacks, and generate properties (e.g., image pixel height and width or aspect ratio) associated with each such image, (iv) correlate the extracted image properties with image properties of known phishing and/or known benign webpages to classify the object, and (v) generate and issue an alert to a network administrator to indicate a classification of the object as part of a phishing attack.

More specifically, the enhanced detection technique embodied in the phishing detection analysis system receives an object for processing to determine whether the object is part of a phishing attack. The received object may include the webpage content or reference the webpage with a URL. The webpage content associated with the URL (i.e. the source code and associated data) is retrieved (e.g., downloaded) directly or indirectly from a remote webserver indicated by the URL. The webpage content comprises source code, which can be, for example, static source code, e.g. HTML code of the downloaded webpage, and/or dynamic source code, that is, HTML code generated from JavaScript code and the like during run-time.

The phishing detection and analysis system (“PDAS”) employs static analysis to scan (inspect) the source code of the received webpage content to detect whether any input prompt (e.g., a form such as a “fill in the blank” displayable element or other data-submission element) are included in the code. The input prompt represents one or more features associated with a potential phishing page, and may be used to correlate with the features of known phishing websites. If there are no input prompts detected by the phishing detection and analysis system, the system does not perform further analysis as the page likely is not used to extract credentials or other sensitive information from the recipient of the webpage. If one or more input prompts are detected during this initial processing of the webpage, the phishing detection and analysis system proceeds to extract the images of the webpage and generate properties associated therewith to be used in classifying the image. The image extracted from the object may include a graphical representation of a subset of the displayed webpage, separately defined graphical representations included in the object, and/or a plurality of the graphical representations defined.

Additional features extracted by the PDAS and associated with the URL being analyzed may include one or more properties associated with each of the embedded images (e.g., a logo, virtual, displayable keyboards, background images, security images, etc.) extracted from the received webpage as well the URL itself. For instance, the PDAS may determine the height and width associated with an image, or in some embodiments, may extract the aspect ratio (i.e. a comparison of the height and width of the image). The PDAS may also generate a cryptographic hash using a cryptographic hashing function (e.g., MD5, SHA2, etc.) of each image which may be used to determine “identicalness” while a second, perceptual hash (sometimes referred to as “phash”), may be generated to be used to determine the similarity of the image to images associated with benign to phishing pages.

For each image associated with the object, a set of the image properties are generated for comparison with properties of known phishing and/or benign webpages. Each image of a webpage is analyzed separately and then each may be correlated separately with properties of known phishing and/or benign webpages, or, depending on the embodiment, the properties across a set of images extracted from the object may be so correlated. More specifically, in one embodiment, each property of an image is correlated with properties of known phishing images and assigned a score based on the correlation. The scores for the various properties are combined to produce an overall or composite score for the image (“image score”). If the image score exceeds a threshold, the image may be determined to be related to a phishing cyber-attack. The image score is a measure of “phishiness” of the image. For example, in this embodiment, if the perceptual hash of a single image on a webpage is associated with phishing while other properties of the image (e.g., the MD5 and aspect ratio) are not correlated with phishing, the entire image may be determined not be associated with a phishing cyber-attack, as reflected in the image score. Meanwhile, in another embodiment, if the perceptual hash similarity is determined to be above a threshold, irrespective of the correlation of the image's other properties with those of a phishing attack, the image may be determined to be associated with a phishing cyber-attack.

Once each image is processed by the PDAS to determine its correlation with known phishing cyber-attacks and thus associated with an image score, the PDAS determines the likelihood that the entire object (i.e., webpage) is related to a phishing attack by generating an object score. The object score can be computed by combining quantitatively the image scores for the images in the object. In some embodiments, a more complicated computation can be used based on a plurality of factors weighted by the image scores, where the factors may include the ratio of displayable image area to the entire displayable area of the webpage (object), and/or quantity of phishy images relative to the entire number of images in the webpage. If the resulting object score exceeds a threshold, the webpage is determined to be part of a phishing cyber-attack and an alert is issued.

The enhanced phishing cyber-attack detection technique described herein enhances the detection of phishing cyberattacks related to objects analyzed by the system using the images embedded in the object. By analyzing the features of the images associated with the object, the system may detect phishing attacks efficiently, limiting the need for increased compute resources and enabling broader protection.

I. Terminology

In the following description, certain terminology is used to describe features of the invention. For example, in certain situations, the term “logic” may be representative of hardware, firmware and/or software that is configured to perform one or more functions. As hardware, logic may include circuitry having data processing or storage functionality. Examples of such circuitry may include, but are not limited or restricted to a microprocessor, one or more processor cores, a programmable gate array, a microcontroller, a controller, an application specific integrated circuit, wireless receiver, transmitter and/or transceiver circuitry, semiconductor memory, or combinatorial logic.

The term “process” may include an instance of a computer program (e.g., a collection of instructions, also referred to herein as an application). In one embodiment, the process may be comprised of one or more threads executing concurrently (e.g., each thread may be executing the same or a different instruction concurrently).

The term “processing” may include execution of a binary or script, or launching an application in which an object is processed, wherein launching should be interpreted as placing the application in an open state and, in some implementations, performing simulations of actions typical of human interactions with the application. For example, the application, an internet browsing application, may be processed such that the application is opened and actions such as “visiting” a website, downloading website pages, scrolling the website page, and activating a link from the website are performed.

The term “object” generally refers to a collection of data, whether in transit (e.g., over a network) or at rest (e.g., stored), often having a logical structure or organization that enables it to be categorized or typed for purposes of analysis. During analysis, for example, the object may exhibit a set of expected and/or unexpected characteristics and, during processing, a set of expected and/or unexpected behaviors, which may evidence the presence of malware and/or potentially part of a cyber-attack. For example, an unexpected behavior of an object may include the generation of additional objects by an object being processed. In one embodiment, an object may include a binary file that may be executed within a virtual machine. Herein, the terms “binary file” and “binary” will be used interchangeably.

The term “feature” may be understood to refer, collectively, to the characteristics of an object detected during static analysis, behaviors manifested during dynamic analysis in response to the run-time processing of (e.g., executing) an object, and properties of the object generated during analysis. For example, characteristics may include metadata associated with the object, including, anomalous formatting or structuring associated with the object. Behaviors may include, but are not limited to, an activity such as creation of a displayable user interaction form and/or patterns of activity or inactivity. Properties are discussed at some length below.

The term “network device” may be construed as any intelligent electronic device with the capability of connecting to a network. Such a network may be a public network such as the internet or a private network such as a wireless data telecommunication network, wide area network, a type of local area network (LAN), or a combination of networks. Examples of a network device may include, but are not limited or restricted to a network appliance, laptop, mobile phone, or server.

The term “phishing,” as described above, may be understood as the practice of inducing individuals to reveal personal or other sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card numbers, by imitating another, often trusted, party. Phishing cyber-attacks are typically disguised as legitimate requests from a trusted party, a “target,” which appears to be legitimate; however, the email is intended to deceive the recipient into sharing sensitive information. For example, an email requesting credential information may be sent to a recipient implying it is from a bank. In this example the recipient is subject to a phishing cyber-attack from the sender imitating the bank.

Lastly, the terms “or” and “and/or” as used herein are to be interpreted as inclusive or meaning any one or any combination. Therefore, “A, B or C” or “A, B and/or C” mean “any of the following: A; B; C; A and B; A and C; B and C; A, B and C.” An exception to this definition will occur only when a combination of elements, functions, steps or acts are in some way inherently mutually exclusive.

II. Phishing Detection and Analysis System

FIG. 1 is an exemplary block diagram of an exemplary architecture of a phishing detection and analysis system 100 (PDAS) connected to a monitored network 102. The PDAS 100 comprises at least a dynamic analysis logic 110 and, in some embodiments, may also comprise a static analysis logic 105. In some embodiments the dynamic analysis logic 110 may further comprise at least one or more virtual machine(s) 120, each virtual machine configured with an operating system 121 (OS), one or more applications 122, and monitoring logic 124, as well as a feature extractor 150. Still further embodiments of the PDAS may also comprise a scheduler 130 and a software profile store 125.

Generally speaking, the phishing detection and analysis system (PDAS) 100 may be implemented as one or more network-connected electronic devices, where each includes physical hardware comprising hardware processor(s), network interface(s), a memory, and a system interconnect as shown in FIG. 3 . Accordingly, each of the components of the phishing detection and analysis system 100 shown in FIG. 1 and described below may be implemented as one or more computer programs or modules executable on one or more processors and stored in memory.

The PDAS 100 receives objects for analysis via the communication interface 305 and determines if the received object is phishy (i.e. is a part of or otherwise associated with a phishing cyber-attack). In some embodiments, the PDAS may analyze the objects using a static analysis logic 105 configured to extract characteristics of the object and determine whether the object is phishy by scanning for known patterns or characteristics and/or representations of machine code identified as correlating with the features of phishing cyber-attacks. In some embodiments the PDAS may retrieve the object from a network-connected object store for analysis. For example, an email may contain a URL that references a webpage, which is retrieved by the PDAS 100 from the object store. The object store may contain pre-downloaded webpages frequently used in phishing attacks, or may be connected with a browser facility for downloading the webpages dynamically during analysis, e.g., in response to a request from the PDAS. If the static analysis logic determines the object is suspicious (definitively neither “benign” nor “malicious”), the static analysis logic may provide the suspicious object to a scheduler 130 of the dynamic analysis logic 110 for further analysis.

The static analysis logic 105 may comprise an indicator scanner 106 which receives features associated with each object and compares it with unique indicators. The unique indicators are each associated with a previously encountered object known to be “benign” or “phishing”. In some embodiments, the indicator scanner 106 may be configured with a whitelist (indicators determined to be benign) and a blacklist (indicators determined to be associated with phishing cyber-attacks). The indicator scanner 106 may effect a comparison by generating the unique indicator of the object from a hash of its machine code or other characteristics of the object and comparing the hash to the labelled hashes (e.g. of a set of known phishing or benign objects). In some embodiments, if the object is deemed suspicious and/or cannot be determined to be either benign or phishing, the static analysis logic may direct continued processing of the object by the parsing engine 107 of the static analysis logic 105.

The parsing engine 107 may process the received content and determine whether the content contains hallmarks associated with phishing cyber-attacks, for example, by prompting for user input. The parsing engine 107 may analyze the received content for textual cues associated with cyber-attacks (e.g. text displayed to the user requesting sensitive personal information such as credentials, etc.) In some embodiments the parsing engine 107 may also examine the received content to determine whether there are elements associated with user input (e.g. form elements for inputting “passwords”, etc.) and data submission (e.g. JavaScript code implementing form submission). The parsing engine 107 of the static analysis logic 105 processes the source code of the object using syntactic analysis. The parsing engine 107 processes the object and its source code to determine whether it contains characteristics of phishing cyber-attacks. For example, the parsing engine may receive the source code associated with an object, which may be received from linked websites (e.g. by Cascading Style Sheets referencing remote images for inclusion in the webpage) and using syntactic analysis identify the use of elements (e.g., particular HTML source code) intended to obtain user input. The identification of features associated with phishing cyber-attacks is an important preliminary indicator of a phishing cyber-attack. The parsing engine 107 may utilize heuristics to analyze the source code of the object and identify properties of interest. If characteristics associated with a phishing cyber-attack are identified by the parsing engine 107 of the static analysis logic 105 the parsing engine may extract further characteristics associated with portions of the object.

The parsing engine 107 may determine that objects are embedded and/or associated with the object (e.g. the image may reference a third party website) and for each image the parsing engine would generate a set of properties associated with the image. The set of properties for the image may comprise the dimensions of the object (e.g. height and width and/or the aspect ratio of the image), a cryptographic hash (e.g., an MD5, etc.) of the image generated by the parsing engine, and a perceptual hash (i.e. a fingerprint of the image derived from features of its content) of the image similarly generated by the parsing engine. In some embodiments the parsing engine may determine, from a semantic analysis of the source code, the target of the object phishing attack (i.e. the entity such as the above mentioned financial institution that is imitated). The set of images and their associated characteristics will be provided to the feature analyzer 160.

The dynamic analysis logic 110 of the phishing detection and analysis system (PDAS) 100, comprises at least one or more virtual machine(s) 120, a software profile store 125, a scheduler 130, and a feature extractor 150. Each virtual machine is configured with an operating system 121, one or more applications 122, and a monitoring logic 124 to intercept activities of the one or more applications during execution while processing of the object. In some embodiments the scheduler 130 is configured to receive an object, from the static analysis logic 105, to be scheduled for processing by the one or more virtual machines 120. The object may be provided to the system with metadata indicating the object has been identified by a prior analysis as suspicious. In other embodiments the scheduler 130 may be configured to process received objects based on the available processing resources of the PDAS 100.

The scheduler 130 is responsible for provisioning and instantiating a virtual machine 120 to execute the object at a schedule time. The scheduler 130 may receive suspicious objects from the malware detection system 105 for analysis in the virtual machine 120. The scheduler 130 may provision a virtual machine 120 with a software profile indicated by the type of object, e.g., an email requires an email application and a URL may require a web browser. In some embodiments, the scheduler may receive metadata associated with the object to be processed identifying a destination device to the scheduler 130. The scheduler may use network resources to identify a software profile similar to the destination device. The scheduler 130 may then provision one or more virtual machine(s) 120 with a software profile (operating system (OS) 121 and one or more applications 122) retrieved from the software profile store 125 and other components appropriate for execution of the object. A virtual machine is executable software that is configured to mimic the performance of a device (e.g., the destination device).

The scheduler 130 can configure the virtual machine to mimic the performance characteristics of a destination device that are pertinent for behavioral monitoring for malware detection. The virtual machine 120 can be provisioned from the store of software profiles 125. In one example, the scheduler 130 configures the characteristics of the virtual machine to mimic only those features (which include statically detected characteristics and dynamically monitored behaviors) that are affected by an object to be executed (opened, loaded, and/or executed) and analyzed. Such features can include ports that are to receive the network data, select device drivers that are to respond to the network data and any other devices that could be coupled to or contained within a device that can respond to the network data.

The store of software profiles 125 is configured to store virtual machine images. The store of software profiles 125 can be any storage capable of storing software. In one example, the store of software profiles 125 stores a single virtual machine image that can be configured by the scheduler 130 to mimic the performance of any destination device on the network. The store of software profiles 125 can store any number of distinct virtual machine images that can be configured to simulate the performance of any destination devices when processed in one or more virtual machine(s) 120.

The processing of an object may occur within one or more virtual machine(s) 120, which may be provisioned with one or more software profiles. The software profile may be configured in response to configuration information provided by the scheduler 130, information extracted from the metadata associated with the object, and/or a default analysis software profile. Each software profile may include an operating system 121 and/or software applications 122. The application 122 may receive an object directly (e.g. an HTML formatted email containing fields for entry of sensitive information, a URL of a webpage enabling a user to submit sensitive user information, etc.). In some embodiments the application 122 may comprise a browser and/or an email client.

Each of the one or more virtual machine(s) 120 may be configured with monitoring logic 124, as part of the software profile. The monitoring logic 124 is configured to observe, capture and report information regarding run-time behavior of an object under analysis during processing within the virtual machine. For example, an object processed by the virtual machine logic may display dynamically generated content, prompting data input by a user. The monitoring logic 124 may identify this dynamically generated content and provide information associated with the behavior to the feature extractor 150. The feature extractor 150 may determine based on the received behavioral information further data should be extracted and provided to the feature analyzer (i.e. if an object prompts for user input, the feature extractor may determine this may be indicative of a phishing cyber-attack and extract all images associated with the object for further analysis).

The monitoring logic 124 of the virtual machine(s) 120 processing the object may identify behaviors (i.e. “observed behaviors”) associated with the object. The observed behaviors are features of the object. Additionally, the effects on the virtual machine caused by the object's operation may be recorded as meta-information. During classification, features may be coupled with meta-information to classify the object processed, as part of a phishing cyber-attack.

The monitoring logic 124 may be embedded to monitor activities within the virtual machine 120 and/or otherwise integrated into the PDAS 100 to monitor operation of the one or more applications 122 of the virtual machine. In some cases, where the object is written in a scripting language or may generate a related object in a scripting language, the application 122 may comprise at least one interpreter to process the suspicious object script and/or an object script generated by processing an object by the application.

In some embodiments, the monitoring logic 124 intercepts behaviors during execution of the application 122 processing an object. The monitoring logic 124 is configured to determine when the user is prompted for data input during processing of an object. The monitoring logic may determine when a user is prompted for input based on syntactic analysis of the code being processed and/or experiential learning.

During processing in the one or more virtual machine(s) 120, monitoring logic 124 of the virtual machine are configured to identify behaviors associated with the phishing cyber-attacks (e.g. credential and/or other user input fields). Signaling from an application 122 may be monitored through intercept points (sometimes referred to as “hooks”) to certain software calls (e.g., Application Programming Interface “API” call, library, procedure, function, or system call). The operations of the application may be monitored an intercept point (herein sometimes referred to as “instrumentation”) in code closely operating with the application to detect a certain type of activity, which may include an activity prompting a particular software call. In some embodiments, the monitoring logic may be embodied as hooks or instrumentation associated with calls to an operating system 121 function. The observed behavior associated with the processing of the object information as well as effects on the virtual machine along with other related metadata may be provided to the feature analyzer 150 for further processing.

A feature analyzer 150 may receive the monitored and detected features from the one or more virtual machine(s) 120. The feature analyzer 150 is configured to detect anomalous activity (e.g., unexpected, abnormal, etc.) indicating that each image associated with the object should be extracted for provision to the feature analyzer 160. The received features are processed by the feature extractor 150 in combination with the data stored in the feature extractor. The feature extractor 150 may contain predefined definitions and/or rules that indicate features (i.e. behaviors) associated with phishing cyber-attacks. For example, during the processing of an object, a user input interface may be created to accept information, e.g., a username and password. The monitoring logic would generate an event in response to the user input interface creation and provide to the feature extractor 150. The feature extractor would consult a predefined set of rules which may indicate that the user input interface creation event may be associated with a phishing cyber-attack and, in response, the feature extractor would extract the images associated with the processing of the object in the virtual machine 120. The predefined definitions and/or rules may be continuously updated via software updates received via the cloud computing services (not shown) and/or via a network administrator.

The feature analyzer 160 receives the features object and images associated with the object, extracted during processing of the object by the static analysis logic 105 and the dynamic analysis logic 110. In some embodiments, the parsing engine 107 and the feature extractor 150 may generate a set of properties associated with each received image. In other embodiments, the images are received by the feature analyzer 160, combined on a per object basis and duplicates filtered out from further processing such that only images unique to the combined set have properties generated. For example, if the static analysis logic 105 extracts images “A” and “B” from a received object while the dynamic analysis logic extracts images “A”, “B”, and “C”, each would be provided to the feature analyzer, before properties are generated, and one sample of images “A” and “B” would be removed such that only one set of properties of “A”, “B” and “C” are generated. The set of images and associated generated properties are provided to the image classifier 170 for further analysis.

The image classifier 170 receives images from the feature analyzer 160. Each image is received with a set of associated generated properties which may include at least a hash of the image, a perceptual hash of the image contents and the dimensions, and/or aspect ratio) of the image. The image classifier may compare, using similarity analysis, the image phash with a set of known phishy phashes stored in a hash store 175. The hash store 175 may store cryptographic hashes and perceptual hashes associated with known benign and/or phishing attacks. During classification, the hashes contained within the hash store 175 may use various techniques (e.g., exact match, similarity analysis, etc.) to determine whether an image hash is associated with a known benign or phishing hash located in the store. The hash store may be a component of the PDAS 100 or located separately or even remotely, and connected to the PDAS 100 via a network connection. In some embodiments similarity analysis may be used to determine whether the image is correlated with a known phishy phash. The image will be determined to be phishy if the level of correlation of the image with known phishy images exceeds a threshold. In some embodiments the image score threshold may be static (e.g., pre-set by the manufacturer of the PDAS 100 or pre-configured by its custom)) or dynamic, varying in response to computer processor availability, information received via the communication interface 305 associated with the current frequency of attacks, and/or experiential learning associated with other factors. When the image classifier 170 determines an image is phishy in response to its correlation with known phishy images exceeding a threshold, the classification is added as a further property of the set of properties associated with the image. The procedure is repeated for each image received from the feature analyzer 160. When each image associated with the object is classified by the image classifier 170, the set of images and the associated generated properties are provided to the object classifier to determine whether the object is determined to represent a phishing cyber-attack.

The object classifier 180 receives from the image classifier 170 a set of images and associated generated properties related to the processing of the object. The object classifier 180 determines the phishiness (i.e. an object score) associated with the object based, at least in part, on the information provided by the image classifier 170. The object classifier 180 may determine an object score by further analyzing the image scores (level of correlation associated with each image) received in comparison to an object score threshold. The object score threshold (i.e. object score threshold) may be based on the total pixel area of images (when displayed) associated with the object determined to be phishy. In other embodiments, the object score threshold may be based on a ratio of phishy image area compared to non-phishy image areas. In still further embodiments, the object score threshold may be based on a ratio of the area of phishy images weighted by the associated image scores against the total area of images in the object. If the object score exceeds the object score threshold, the object classifier 180 determines the object to represent a phishing cyber-attack. When the object classifier 180 determines the phishiness of the object it provides the determination to the reporting engine 190 for alerting. In some embodiments the image classifier 170 and object classifier 180 may be functionally integrated into a single component.

The reporting engine 190 is adapted to receive information from the object classifier 180 and generate alerts that identify to a network administrator and/or an expert network analyst the likelihood of a phishing cyber-attack associated with the processed object. Other additional information regarding the phishing object may optionally be included in the alerts. For example, an alert may include information associated with the targeted recipient of the object and/or the “target” entity (e.g., financial institution) mimicked by the object.

Referring now to FIG. 2 , a flowchart, illustrating an exemplary method for determining the phishiness (likelihood of being associated with phishing cyber-attacks) of an object received for analysis by the phishing detection and analysis system (PDAS) 100. Each block illustrated in FIG. 2 represents an operation performed in the method 200 of detecting phishing cyber-attacks with the PDAS 100. The method 200 starts at step 205 and proceeds to step 210 wherein the PDAS receives, via the communication interface 305 connected to the monitored network 102, an object for analysis. In some embodiments the monitored network 102 may be connected to a PDAS 100 that is hosted in a “cloud” and accessed for object analysis via remote network connection. The object may comprise a URL and/or content associated with a URL for determination if associated with a phishing cyber-attack. In some embodiments the PDAS 100 may receive the object for analysis from a monitored network 102 via the public network (i.e. the Internet) through the communication interface 305 to analyze objects for phishing cyber-attacks from a remote location. If the object for analysis has been received by the PDAS in step 210 comprises only a URL, the procedure advances to step 215 where the content associated with the URL is retrieved for analysis. Alternatively, if the object received by the PDAS in step 210 comprises the content for analysis (i.e. the source code of the URL and associated data), the procedure advances to step 220.

In step 215, the PDAS 100 retrieves the webpage source code associated with the received URL if in step 210 the PDAS receives a URL as an object. In various embodiments the PDAS 100 may retrieve the content via the public network, by intercepting network traffic over the monitored network 102, or from a network object store of the monitored network. When the PDAS has retrieved the content associated with the object (in step 210 or step 215) it will be processed by the static analysis logic 105 and/or the dynamic analysis logic 110 of the PDAS 100. The dynamic analysis logic may receive the network traffic associated with the object content, received in steps 210 and/or 215, so as to be received and processed as network traffic by the virtual machine(s) 120.

In step 220, the static analysis logic 105 and dynamic analysis logic 110 of the PDAS 100 process the content of the object to determine whether the object contains features associated with user input. The static analysis logic 105, while processing the object with a parsing engine 107 may determine whether the object contains features associated with user input. The parsing engine 107 receives the object for analysis and parses the source code for features associated with phishing cyber-attacks (e.g., user input fields, data upload elements, etc.) A user input feature of the object may be determined to be associated with user input based on analysis of the associated labels and content of the object and/or experiential data of the parsing engine 107. Similarly, a static analysis of the object may, in some embodiments, occur in the dynamic analysis logic 110, for example, with respect to images not able to be analyzed prior to execution of the source code of the webpage.

The dynamic analysis logic 110, in step 220, may receive the object for processing to determine whether the object contains features associated with user input. The object will be provided to the scheduler 130 of the dynamic analysis logic 110 for prioritization in an analysis queue in at least one of the virtual machine(s) 120. The scheduler will determine a suitable software profile to be selected from a software profile store 125 and used by the virtual machine(s) 120 to process the object. During processing of the object in the virtual machine 120 the monitoring logic 124 may identify features associated with user input. For example, an object processed in the virtual machine may launch a browser (i.e. an application 122) and navigate the window to a webpage containing at least a user input field. The monitoring logic would identify the existence of the user input field and the analysis procedure would proceed to step 230.

If during step 220 the static analysis logic 105 and/or the dynamic analysis logic 110 identifies features associated with data input, each respective logic will continue processing the object in step 230. If no user input features are detected in step 220 the analysis procedure will proceed to step 260 and end. In step 230, each analysis logic would extract the images associated with the object for further analysis. The static analysis logic 105 would extract the images associated with the object with the parsing logic 107, while similarly, the dynamic analysis logic would extract images for further analysis using the monitoring logic 124 coordinating with the feature extractor 150. The feature extractor 150 and the parsing engine 107 would provide the extracted images to the feature analyzer 160 for further processing in step 235.

In step 235, the feature analyzer 160 receives each image associated with the object and generates a set of properties associated with each image of the object. The properties generated by the feature analyzer 160 are used to determine phishiness of the object. In some embodiments, properties generated from the image may include the height and width of the image, the MD5 associated with the image, and/or a perceptual hash (i.e. a phash). The feature analyzer associates each image, its properties and the object target (e.g., a financial institution known to be often used in phishing attacks) and provides the set of properties to the image classifier 170 in step 240.

The image classifier 170, in step 240, receives associated properties for each image of the object and analyzes each image separately. The image classifier 170 compares the MD5 of the image with a store of known phishy MD5s, such as a hash store 175. The store of phishy MD5s may be updated via the communication interface 305, creating or removing entries associated with phishy MD5s as the threat landscape changes. Phishy MD5s are cryptographic hashes of files associated with phishing cyber-attacks. A phishiness is determined by experiential learning. If an MD5 entry for the image is not identified in the image MD5 store of the image classifier, the image classifier will compare the image phash with a phishy phash store. The phishy phash store contains entries associated with known phishy image phashes. In some embodiments, the phishy phash store and the phishy MD5 store may reside in the same store (i.e. a database of entries containing both phishy phashes and MD5s), separate stores, integrated into indicator store 145. The comparison of the image phash with those in the phishy phash store may result in an exact match, identifying the image as a known phishy image. Similarly, if a similarity analysis of the image phash identifies a correlation with a known phishy image, the image will be assigned an image score associated with the level of similarity. If the similarity score does not exceed an image score threshold, the image will be determined to not be suspicious and processing will end. If the image score does exceed an image score threshold, the image classifier 170 will continue to process the object which may include determining if the aspect ratio (i.e. the ratio of the image width to the image height) is similar to images stored in the phishing image database. The image classifier continues the analysis process for each image associated with the object. When the image classifier 170 completes its analysis of each image associated with the object, identifying at least one suspicious and/or phishy image, the image classifier provides the determination of phishiness associated with each image (i.e. an image score) to the object classifier 180 in step 245.

In step 245 the object classifier 180 receives at least the image score associated with each image of the set of images to be used by the object classifier to generate a determination of phishiness of the object (i.e. an object score). The object is determined to be phishy when the object score of the set of images exceeds an object score threshold. In some embodiments the object score threshold may be related to a ratio of phishy image area (i.e. the product of the height and width of each image) to non-phishy image area. In other embodiments the object score threshold may be relate to a weighted average of the area and image score (i.e. the product of the image score and area of the phishy image) as a proportion of the total image area. The object score threshold may be static or dynamic, adjusting in response to updates via the communication interface 305 and/or network administrator input. If the object classifier does not determine the object is phishy, the procedure may proceed to step 260 and end. If the object classifier 180 determines the object is phishy, the determination is provided to the reporting engine 190 in step 250.

The process continues in step 250 wherein, the reporting engine 190 receives information from the object classifier 180 and generates alerts issued via the communication interface 305 that identify to an administrator (or an expert network analyst) the likelihood of a phishing cyber-attack originating from the object processed by the PDAS analysis logic. Additional information regarding the phishing object may optionally be included in the alerts. For example, additional reported information may contain, in part, the targeted domain (i.e. a website from which images of the object are similar, etc.). The targeted domain associated with the URL may indicate whether or not the webpage is genuine (i.e. if the targeted domain is consistent with the domain identified in the URL). The reporting engine 190 may also provide connected network security systems with updated information regarding phishing attacks and the associated MD5 for blocking the network traffic associated with the phishing objects. In some embodiments, if the object classifier 180 does not determine the object represents a phishing cyber-attack, the reporting engine 190 may alert a network administrator via an alert, while in alternative embodiments the reporting engine will not issue an alert. Once step 250 is complete, the generated phishing detection procedure concludes at step 260.

FIG. 3 is an exemplary embodiment of a logical representation of the phishing detection and analysis system 100 of FIG. 1 . The phishing detection and analysis system 100, in an embodiment may include a housing, which is made entirely or partially of a hardened material (e.g., hardened plastic, metal, glass, composite or any combination thereof) that protects the circuitry within the housing, namely one or more processors 310 that are coupled to a communication interface 305 via a first transmission medium 307. The communication interface 305, in combination with a communication logic 320, enables communications with external network devices and/or other network appliances to receive updates for the phishing detection and analysis system 100. According to one embodiment of the disclosure, the communication interface 305 may be implemented as a physical interface including one or more ports for wired connectors. Additionally, or in the alternative, the communication interface 305 may be implemented with one or more radio units for supporting wireless communications with other electronic devices. The communication interface logic 320 may include logic for performing operations of receiving and transmitting one or more objects via the communication interface 305 to enable communication between the generated malware detection system 100 and network devices via the a network (e.g., the internet) and/or cloud computing services.

The processor(s) 310 is further coupled to a persistent storage 315 via a second transmission medium 313. According to one embodiment of the disclosure, the persistent storage 315 may include, an optional static analysis logic 105 comprising an indicator scanner 106 and/or a parsing engine 107, a dynamic analysis logic comprising one or more virtual machine(s) 120, a scheduler 130, a feature extractor 150, a feature analyzer 160, an image classifier 170, an object classifier 180, a reporting engine 190, as well as the communication interface logic 320. Of course, when implemented as hardware, one or more of these logic units could be implemented separately from each other.

In the foregoing description, the invention is described with reference to specific exemplary embodiments thereof. It will, however, be evident that various modifications and changes may be made thereto without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A computerized method for detecting a phishing cyber-attack, the method comprising: generating one or more properties associated with each of a plurality of images, the plurality of images included as part of a webpage being an object under analysis; determining an image score associated with each image of the plurality of images based on a correlation of the one or more properties associated with the image with one or more properties associated with known phishy images being images known to be part of or associated with the phishing cyber-attack; and generating an object score by combining the image scores of the plurality of images associated with the object.
 2. The computerized method of claim 1 further comprising: generating an alert upon determining that the object, based on the object score, is associated with the phishing cyber-attack.
 3. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein prior to generating the one or more properties, the method further comprising: analyzing the object to identify suspicious features associated with the plurality of images, the suspicious features being features that cannot be determined to be either benign or malicious based on features known to be benign or malicious.
 4. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the one or more properties associated with an image of the plurality of images comprise a cryptographic hash of the image.
 5. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the one or more properties associated with an image of the plurality of images comprise a perceptual hash of the image, the perceptual hash operates as a fingerprint of the image and is derived from features of the image.
 6. The computerized method of claim 5, wherein the perceptual hash is used in determining a similarity between the image and at least one of the known phishy images.
 7. The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising: providing a hash store identifying the one or more properties associated with the known phishy images.
 8. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of images comprises two or more images visible to a user when the webpage is displayed.
 9. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein a property of the one or more properties associated with each of the plurality of images comprises a target entity for an email including a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that is selected to reference the webpage being analyzed.
 10. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the object score is generated based on a weighting of the image scores by a plurality of factors including (i) a ratio of displayable image area to the entire displayable area of the webpage or (ii) a quantity of phishy images relative to an entire number of images in the webpage.
 11. A non-transitory persistent storage including logic, when executed by one or more processors, detect phishing cyber-attacks, comprising: feature analyzer logic that, when in operation, receives a plurality of images extracted from a webpage being an object under analysis and generates properties associated with each of the plurality of extracted images; classifier logic that, when in operation, (a) receives at least the properties associated with each of the plurality of extracted images, (b) determines an image score associated with each image of the plurality of extracted images based on a correlation between the properties associated with the image and properties associated with known phishy images being images known to be part of or associated with a phishing cyber-attack, (c) generates an object score by combining the image scores of the plurality of extracted images associated with the object, and (d) classifies the object as being associated with a phishing cyber-attack when the object score exceeds a threshold; and a reporting engine that, when in operation, generates an alert upon determining, by the classifier logic, that the object is associated with the phishing cyber-attack.
 12. The non-transitory persistent storage of claim 11 further comprising: feature extractor logic that, when in operation, extracts the plurality of images associated with the webpage accessible through a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and being content corresponding to the object.
 13. The non-transitory persistent storage of claim 11 further comprising: dynamic analysis logic that, when in operation, processes the object within an instrumented virtual machine.
 14. The non-transitory persistent storage of claim 11, wherein the one of the properties generated by the feature analyzer logic comprises a cryptographic hash of an image of the plurality of extracted images or a perceptual hash of the image operating as a fingerprint of the image and is derived from features of the image.
 15. The non-transitory persistent storage of claim 14, wherein the classifier logic uses the perceptual hash being one of the properties to determine a similarity between the image and at least one of the known phishy images.
 16. The non-transitory persistent storage of claim 11, wherein the plurality of extracted images provided to the feature analyzer correspond to images visible when the webpage is displayed to a user.
 17. The non-transitory persistent storage of claim 11, wherein the feature analyzer logic, prior to generating the one or more properties, analyzes the object to identify suspicious features associated with the plurality of images, the suspicious features being features that cannot be determined to be either benign or malicious based on features known to be malicious or benign.
 18. The non-transitory persistent storage of claim 11, wherein a property of the one or more properties associated with each of the plurality of images comprises a target entity for an email including a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that is selected to reference the webpage being analyzed.
 19. The non-transitory persistent storage of claim 11, wherein the object score is generated based on a weighting of the image scores by a plurality of factors including (i) a ratio of displayable image area to the entire displayable area of the webpage or (ii) a quantity of phishy images relative to an entire number of images in the webpage.
 20. A system for detecting a phishing cyber-attack, the system comprising: a feature analyzer to generate one or more properties associated with each of a plurality of images, the plurality of images included as part of a webpage being an object under analysis; an image classifier communicatively coupled to the feature analyzer, the image classifier to determine an image score associated with each image of the plurality of images based on a correlation of the one or more properties associated with the image with one or more properties associated with known phishy images being images known to be part of or associated with the phishing cyber-attack; an object classifier communicatively coupled to the image classifier, the object classifier to generate an object score by combining the image scores of the plurality of images associated with the object; and a reporting engine communicatively coupled to the object classifier, the reporting engine to generate an alert upon determining that the object is associated with the phishing cyber-attack.
 21. The system of claim 20 further comprising: feature extractor logic to extract the plurality of images associated with the webpage accessible through a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and being content corresponding to the object.
 22. The system of claim 20 further comprising: dynamic analysis logic to process the object within an instrumented virtual machine.
 23. The system of claim 20, wherein the one of the properties generated by the feature analyzer logic comprises a cryptographic hash of an image of the plurality of extracted images or a perceptual hash of the image operating as a fingerprint of the image and is derived from features of the image.
 24. The system of claim 20, wherein the plurality of extracted images provided to the feature analyzer correspond to images visible when the webpage is displayed to a user.
 25. The system of claim 20, wherein the feature analyzer logic, prior to generating the one or more properties, analyzes the object to identify suspicious features associated with the plurality of images, the suspicious features being features that cannot be determined to be either benign or malicious based on features known to be malicious or benign.
 26. The system of claim 20, wherein the object score is generated based on a weighting of the image scores by a plurality of factors including (i) a ratio of displayable image area to the entire displayable area of the webpage or (ii) a quantity of phishy images relative to an entire number of images in the webpage. 